


daemon!AU

by Wolveshowlatnight



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Gen, Not!Fic, Originally Posted on Tumblr, and left it at that, maybe character study, not!fic means I wrote this down mostly in one go and fixed some typos and punctuation, this is not a complete fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-20
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-10-13 09:59:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17486030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wolveshowlatnight/pseuds/Wolveshowlatnight
Summary: Everyone settles in their fourth year, this is just how it goes. Except, obviously, for Draco.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [artemis69](https://archiveofourown.org/users/artemis69/gifts).



> archiving from tumblr, let's see if I can come up with a better title later
> 
> This was for artemis69's birthday in 2017.

The thing is, they are in their sixth year (voldi did not survive the second encounter with Harry and went puff together with Quirrel during their first year, horcruxes don’t work in this universe because daemons) and Draco’s daemon Bodil is still unsettled. He is the only one in their year with an unsettled daemon, the current fifth years are all settled and even the fourth years only have a handful of unsettled daemons left, which is normal. Everyone settles in their fourth year, this is just how it goes. Except, obviously, for Draco.

There are… a lot of healers over his summer break between year four and five and he doesn’t go home for break during their entire fifth year. Bodil doesn’t leave his side at all for their first month back at school; they don’t talk about it. Nothing happened. Blaise looks concerned, Pansy frowns, and Crabbe and Goyle hover clumsily, while they both grit their teeth against the teachers’ worried looks. Nothing happened. They just learned what it’s like to have everyone around you assume they know more than you, when they don’t. They are fine.

They would be even better, if everyone else stopped making such a big deal out of it. Draco would roll his eyes but that’s plebeian. (Bodil cocks her head “And what was that with the garden gnome in the sitting room?” “Justified.” “Oookay.” “Stop looking at me like that.”)

Draco? Doesn’t care.

Bodil? Cares even less.

She flits between forms with the unprejudiced ease of a small child, goes from diving in the lake to soaring over the towers, crawls through the tiniest cracks just to emerge on the other side as a towering dragon. … If no one’s looking that is. People tend to get weirded out by dragon daemons.

They call it “Potential” when their friends look worried, but they know, by now?, they’re closer to untethered.

In hindsight and with distance Draco can see where serving Voldemort was supposed to be his future, where his parents were raising him for it. He isn’t sure, where that leaves him now, except for without purpose. He is fairly certain Bodil won’t settle until he finds one.

(And it’s fairly certain, not sure, because they’ve spent years studying daemons by now, they started even before they started at Hogwarts, historic accounts, theories, studies, observations, whatever they could get their hands on and the one thing they learned was universal? Daemons are unique and not predictable.)

And it’s not like they haven’t thinned out the possibilities over the years, most notably last Christmas break (year 5) when Bodil announced, she wouldn’t be a bird (because “They are not solid enough, Draco, and we’re not the type to ‘flutter’ around, now, are we?”) around the same time they tried out the more, well, problematic shapes. They hadn’t exactly had a rebellious phase where they were actively trying to freak people out (even though they’d had their fun watching Blaise run around with Askula as human for a week before reining them back in), so they go through human, dragons, incorporeal forms and others, but nothing sticks. (Bodil describes the feeling as odd or weird and they are kinda glad about it, because some things are cool in theory but in theory only.)

They eliminate snakes, reptiles and amphibians (“Cool, but too small.” “One of the magical ones, maybe?” “Not physically too small, Draco.”), insects (“No, just, no, Merlin’s beard, they are worse than birds!”) and fish (“Dull, unbearably dull, I am going to die DULL, Draco for fuck’s sake _don’t make me do this_!”)

They start stretching the same winter. When they settle, Bodil won’t be able to fly with him anymore; _that_ they are sure of. Their last game of the year, they easily have the range to cover the entire Quidditch area without Bodil having to move from the bench. Even after enforced hours in the infirmary, because apparently stretching is not a thing you’re supposed to do while still unsettled, who knew?, they are still proud of it.

(Waiting until you lose the natural flexibility that comes with shifting forms, before starting to stretch seems counterintuitive to Draco and it’s not like it hurt or anything, but there’s always been a kind of disconnect between him and others, so, what does he know? It’s too late anyway and neither of them would give up their new flexibility for anything. The farthest they’ve been away from each other so far was a midweek candy run, where Bodil as a falcon picked up some sweets from Hogsmead to stave off study fatigue. No one knows about that one, and after the infirmary trip they feel wary about telling anyone.)

ANYWAY, it’s the start of their sixth year and Bodil still hasn’t settled. They’ve made peace with it, they pick a form for her to stay in over the day and mostly people pretend everything’s normal. They go over their day and don’t dwell on it.

She stays an Arctic fox for almost a week and Draco starts to think ‘maybe’ but then she flits through a dozen shapes very rapidly as if to shake off a bad feeling and settles on badger for the day. He isn’t overly concerned with her unsettled state, but he could really do without the looks.

When Bodil does finally settle, it’s rather anticlimactic. There is no big formative event, no fight or philosophical revelation; she just shifts and that’s that.

It’s Christmas break again, they are about to go to bed after an evening of group study in the common room, simultaneously talking first years through spells and potions while slapping Blaise over the head with a parchment roll for distracting everyone. (Draco’s dreading their last year, Blaise tends to compensate stress by goofing around… He’s mourning his nerves preemptively because he won’t have the time then.)

Bodil has taken to shifting through random forms to find one for the next day that feels comfortable, which she is doing, when there is a soft “oh” from the bedroom, before a strange sensation ripples through their connection. Draco stills halfway through brushing his teeth and stares at himself in the mirror. Is this…? He finishes carefully, oddly aware of himself and steps back into their room.

Bodil is on their bed, expanses of golden, shiny fur, and looks as unbalanced as Draco feels.

“Are you…?” he asks and she shifts around a little.

“I don’t … maybe … not quite?” She kneads the bedcovers. She shifts a little, stretches, grows, darkens, and then she stops.

They stare at each other.

She is big. Bigger than anything she’s shifted into over the last year, bigger than anything not magical she’s _ever_ shifted into. Even the horse and the grizzly bear they tried seem to have been smaller, but there is no way of telling; they won’t be able to compare because there will be no more shifting. Bodil has settled. 

Draco lets out a shaky breath.

Even lying down and folded together as she is, she takes up half of the bed, all strong muscle and a head almost as wide as her shoulders; Draco waves his hand to make her jump off so he can see her better. She does.

Standing she is ca. 4 feet 5 or 6 at shoulder height, and over 7 feet long, with tail maybe close to 9, a massive head with roundish ears and kinda but not really stocky limbs that still manage to look agile somehow, powerful in any case, Draco thinks it might be an inherent feline impression. Her fur is thick and a dark reddish gold, with what seem to be darker spots towards her belly, and grows stronger around the neck, not quite a mane but more than just the regular fur coat, he thinks it’s called a ruff. He’ll look it up later.

Bodil demands a mirror and Draco obliges. She laughs at her reflection. “Do you know, what this is, Draco?” He does. They stare at each other.

Bodil is a cat.

The representation of his soul/personality/whatever-the-current-socially-accepted-interpretation-of-daemons-is… is a cat.

A big cat.

**.**

**.**

**.**

A bloody _fucking LION!!!_

Of all things.

Fuck.

They are never gonna live this down.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was for artemis69's birthday in 2018.

So.

Bodil’s a lion.

Who’d’ve thought.

Nothing wrong with it, mind you, perfectly acceptable animal for a daemon to settle as.

Just, one, small problem, though.

After a week of basically living in the library, going through every daemon and animal book twice without finding any hint and two almost panic attacks, because he can NOT, under any circumstances, have a hybrid daemon (Bodil isn’t very accommodating towards his concerns, she **knows** she isn’t a hybrid, completely disregarding the fact that adult lions do not have such obvious markings and female lions don’t have this much of a ruff, Draco isn’t sure what to think and he is very adamantly not thinking about her size), he resigns himself to having to wait until winter break, when he can go home and look through his own books. (There was this one relative, an uncle, he thinks, who was obsessed with daemons, to be polite about it, and Draco’s inherited everything he collected. The Malfoy library is impressive to begin with but the daemon section is something else entirely, they even get research requests sometimes.) (No one is allowed to look too closely at the last shelf, though. Almost the entire bottom row consists of muggle publications… . They are not inherited, Draco added them to the collection after stumbling over them in Diagon Alley entirely by coincidence. … He did not go looking for them or order them specifically for his studies or his collection and if his daemon could stop it with the looks that would be awesome!)

But that is NOT the issue right now, we got sidetracked, focus, people.

The issue is, Christmas break is almost over. There is not enough time left to go home and comb through his own library for an answer to the question: What did Bodil settle as?

And Draco can decidedly not run around without knowing what his daemon is. That’s somehow worse than the possibility of her being a hybrid. (“I am not a hybrid, seriously Draco, you need to get a grip.” “You have spots towards your belly! Adult Lions do not have such obvious markings!” “ARGH!” It is entirely possible they are both a little stressed out about the whole not knowing thing. Possibly.) (Bodil is very adamant, that she is only stressed because Draco is. If he just calmed down, everything would be fine.)

And then Madam Pince, who has developed some kind of soft spot for that diligent student who treats her books so well, advises him in passing to “be seen more with your daemon, dear, people just love to gossip” and Draco thinks Fuck, because there is another issue he totally ignored so far. Winter break is six weeks out. How are they going to hide Bodil for six weeks in a school that loves nothing more than to point at him and his unsettled daemon? Who is no longer unsettled.

They talk it over that night and come to the conclusion, they are not. If Bodil stays in the castle with him, someone will notice. She is too big to not get noticed and she can’t just stay in their room, because Draco is Prefect and one of the reasons Prefects have their own rooms is so students can talk to them about problems in private. (This hasn’t been an issue so far since it’s break and basically everyone is either at home or reveling in the no responsibilities that come with being on break.)

Okay.

The solution they come up with in the end, is the Forbidden Forest.

Bodil will stay out in the forest over the day, (her coat is thick enough that the Scottish winter shouldn’t be a problem) (Which, again, lions? Not really cold weather animals. “Draco. I’m gonna sit on you.” “YOU CAN’T JUST IGNORE THIS!”) (boy is a bit high strung), after everyone’s to bed they will smuggle her back in (which provides Draco with an opportunity to practice his glamour spell for enchantments… he’s good at multitasking, okay?), so they can survive the next day, and smuggle her back out before anyone’s up in the morning. There are a few hidden tunnels they can use to avoid the patrols if necessary, but aside from the Slytherin Prefect and Snape no one really patrols the dungeon, so they only have to worry about Snape and Snape doesn’t patrol the dungeons. Living in the catacombs does have some perks.

The only thing left is to distract everyone else from him running around for six weeks without his daemon nearby. Fortunately it is no secret that they are separated and Draco is planning to use that to their advantage.

With a careful combination of said Separation, some skillfully placed hints that he and Bodil are trying out small animals, a staged, loud disagreement between them that has everyone thinking they are fighting and not talking to each other for a week and diverting attention to other school scandals (Draco winces guiltily, he will have to apologies to Blaise at one point later for orchestrating their affair with that Hufflepuff boy into a bigger deal than it is, he actually likes Ethan, Blaise could do a lot worse.) they make it through almost four weeks without anyone the wiser. It’s stressful and the absence of his daemon makes for a short temper but it works.

And then someone remarks on Bodil never being around.

“Just because you don’t see her, doesn’t mean she’s not around.” Draco quips and pets his pocket to diffuse the situation but now the Slytherins are looking and it’s only a matter of time until someone will ask hey, when’s the last time anyone’s seen Bodil anyway? Because Slytherins are attentive little shits like that.

Draco hates his life. (He might also be getting a little paranoid. Just a little.)

(Is he blowing the whole thing way out of proportion? Why, yes, yes, he probably is. Is that gonna make him stop? No, certainly not.)

(He might also be distracting himself from _The Other_ Problem.

Malfoy daemons are never this big or obviously brute force. His father is going to be _disappointed_. Bodil nips him in the leg and sits up to look at him. She is waiting for something, for him to get something, he can tell, but he doesn’t know what and she just sighs before huffing and lying back down. It’s nothing pressing, then.)

They make it. He doesn’t know how, but they make it. The last week is kind of a blur.

Draco transfigures his school trunk into a backpack and widens the inside so Bodil can fit. (Which, yes, kinda illegal, but these are extenuating circumstances, okay? Okay.)

The train ride is uneventful, he shares a compartment with Pansy (greater noctule bat) and Goyle (American Staffordshire Terrier), who let him sleep and only wake him when they’ve almost reached King’s Cross.

Brandy, his house elf, greets him at the station, which means, since his mother usually insists on getting him in person, his parents are busy and he probably won’t see them until breakfast. He’s grateful, it gives him the opportunity to vanish into the library without worrying about offending his mother.

They are rather unsuccessful during their first foray and stumble sleep deprived to breakfast the next morning, their parents already at the table. They are tired enough, that they miss their parents’ double take. They are not tired enough to miss Lucius’ reproach over Bodil’s form and size or his demand for her to change into something more "acceptable". They exchange a glance before Draco announces that to be impossible since Bodil is settled.

For a moment there is an almost oppressive silence at the table before Jarrna, Lucius’ leucistic jackal daemon, snarls angrily and Riannon, Narcissa’s lemur daemon, peers down curiously from the back of her seat.

Bodil snarls at Jarrna in answer with all the weight her larger size allows and the jackal flinches back. It’s a quick exchange, but Draco sees his father’s jaw clench and can feel the shift between them as Bodil relaxes and stretches out of the slightly hunched up stance she had adopted.

They are bigger than them.

                        They are stronger than them. 

                                               They do not need to fear the jackal’s sharp bite anymore.

Jarrna backs off and Lucius takes to ignoring them.

Draco breaths.

Ria jumps down and circles Bodil before climbing her like a jungle gym and starting to groom her head. The lemur looks tiny and fragile in comparison. (She’s, like, half Bodil’s face in size, it looks ridiculous.)

(It’s another point of opposition between their parents; it’s been less and less that Lucius and Narcissa have seen eye to eye over the last few years. It’s never been so blatant before, though. Draco entertains the thought of them divorcing for a moment, but that’s ludicrous, they are both purebloods and this is simply Not Done.)

Ria is the one who asks about Bodil’s deviations after breakfast, about her colour and size, about her looking like a lion but not how one would expect a lion to look and with Lucius gone, Draco admits they don’t know, talks about how they’ve been looking but so far no hint, about the last weeks and the stress and his mother hugs him and tells him he’ll figure it out.

(Lucius doesn’t come back for lunch _or_ dinner.)

(No one is particularly upset about it.)

Draco is burning the midnight oil the third day in a row, when he stumbles over a picture of Bodil in one of the muggle books. It’s a coincidence. The book has only in the most superficial way to do with daemons, as it depicts rare and extra ordinary animal forms that have been theorized as daemons being able to take them but haven’t been observed so far.

It’s a small picture, but it’s a concrete start and he knows there won’t be any more information in his library.

It’s rather anticlimactic from there. They floo to London the next morning as soon as the British Library opens, and around noon they have an answer.

European cave lion, carnivorous, seemingly not fond of caves despite the name, not exactly related to African or Asian lions, possibly a pack animal, extinct for roughly 13,000 years, give or take.

Draco isn’t sure whether that’s worse than a hybrid or not. Bodil whacks him with her tail. (She didn’t do it particularly hard, but he thinks it might still bruise. She huffs at him.)

It is surprisingly easy to be with Bodil in public; Draco had anticipated more problems and even though he feels ridiculously small and disproportionate next to his daemon, it’s everyone else who moves out of their way. (They don’t look disproportionate. Draco had at best been slim as a child, but that was before two growth spurts and Quidditch had put some muscles on him, sometimes he still forgets that, though.)

They don’t return home immediately, opting for taking a break in a café instead. Bodil lies under the table, paws and tail tucked in to keep out of the way, but she is still very noticeable and people _notice_. Luckily, since they are calm and relaxed, all they get are a few curious glances and no one bothers them, but it does draw their attention to another problem. They had noticed the tight fit when they were flooing that morning but hadn’t thought about it. Here, surrounded by all kinds of people and daemons, Bodil is a big cat with the emphasis on **big** , Bodil stands out.

It’s not the predator thing, there are plenty of predators of all sorts around - when they arrived they even saw a cougar - but none of them are as **big**. Draco doesn’t know anyone with a daemon even close in size to Bodil. He doesn’t have to wonder about her size being abnormal, though, she fits perfectly in the estimated size range for her species. (For a moment he puts his forehead on his clasped hands. Estimated size. Merlin. There are not enough remains - _remains!_ \- to get reliable measurements or any kind of reliable information about the representation of his soul. This is not a problem he anticipated having. Ever.)

A problem he does have, is the question what now?

Bodil’s size and strength are a definite advantage, but she is still an extinct species. (What does that even mean for him?) She could probably pass as a regular, abnormally large lion with a colour variation, but is that something they _want_ to do? (Do they want to deal with the implications of an extinct soul?) (Would people even ask? She looks like _some_ kind of lion, won’t they just assume her to be a regular lion to begin with?)

(Who even has the specialist knowledge about extinct species to make that connection?)

(Granger, probably. That would be just his luck.)

They are not gonna hide. Six weeks of sneaking around had been way more than enough, thank you, but no, thank you. (Draco kinda wishes his father’s reaction hadn’t been the first reaction Bodil’s settled form had received, but well, hindsight and all that.)

They entertain the idea of visiting Diagon Alley, or maybe Knockturn Alley, but someone steps into the café with a bear daemon and they drop it again. (The bear is half Bodil’s size and sitting around in muggle London - where no one knows him - is one thing, stepping into magical spaces where everyone and their cat would know and recognize a Malfoy? Yeah, he does not fancy ending up on the gossip pages.)

They go home, Lucius is nowhere to be seen, which is a plus, though Draco doesn’t feel like his presence would be much of a problem either, and Narcissa wins all the awards in the world for being a warm and loving mother. The last few days are slow and relaxed, before they have to be at King’s Cross again.

They go early, in part because Narcissa has social obligations later in the day, and in part because Draco doesn’t want to deal with the staring first thing. He finds a department and marks it Slytherin, which is usually enough to keep other students away. It’s not long before Pansy and a bit later Goyle show up, both do a double take, but take Bodil’s form rather well. (The department should be too small for all of them, but the departments are meant for six people with their daemons and they will accommodate six people with their daemons no matter how ridiculously big one daemon thinks she has to be.) (They have seen fully grown dragon daemons when they were still acceptable, the tiny kitty poses no difficulty.)

They don’t pay much attention to their surroundings when they arrive in Hogsmead, Bodil takes off towards Hogwarts on her own, she doesn’t like the carriages much, never has, and now she can run on her own. (She is actually faster than the carriages. When Draco steps into his common room she is already lying in front of the fire and letting herself be admired by the younger students.) (Blaise basically drops onto him, demanding answers and explanations, and since Draco hasn’t come up with an adequate apology yet, he has no choice but to dance and oblige.)

(It doesn’t take long for the daemons of the younger students, and some of the older ones, too, to congregate on Bodil, surreptitiously sitting very close next to her, still far enough away to deny seeking safety. Hogwarts can be a cruel place, when you don’t fit in and no one in Slytherin fits in. But this comes later.)

They take a moment to brace themselves before they head to the Great Hall for dinner. It’s unlikely for everyone at once to realize Bodil has settled, but someone had to have seen her at the station in Hogsmead and this school basically lives on gossip.

Draco’s hand seeks Bodil’s fur. They are Slytherin. They are one and they stand as one. They can weather anything. They can do this. (“Wow. Don’t get a job with public speaking, your pep talk sucks.” “Oh, shut up, fur brain.”)

He isn’t wrong, though.


End file.
